Alexia remembered the first time she had asked her father to teach her to write poetry. He was drunk and disoriented and she was curious and stupid enough to discard her knowledge of social boundaries and pluck up the courage to ask him. Her father sat at their kitchen table, reeking of alcohol, and scribbling furiously into a tiny notebook on the table. She cautiously climbed up onto the chair next to him and peered over at his drunken scrawl. His words were scattered all over the paper, like lost travellers trying to find their way home, and Alexia wasn’t sure whether it was for artistic purposes of the results of too much alcohol and piled up emotions. She watched him rip the paper out and fling it onto the table top, and attack a fresh sheet. She watched him translate his black, burnt soul into the words on a page. She watched him dot the paper with unshed tears and fury take the shape of broken pencil leads and crushed balls of paper. All through this, he seemed oblivious to her and she, the invisible spectator. For once, Alexia began to appreciate her father’s ability to see through her as if she were thin air.
Then, he suddenly turned to her. “If you wanted to know what I was doing, just ask,” he slurred. “Don’t stand there staring at me, you’re making me uncomfortable.”
As if in some kind of trance, she was unable to reply, and could only stare up at him, with pleading eyes that did not belong to her and an innocence so out of character that even her father gave in to it. With a sigh, he picked up his book and shut it, turning to face her. “I am writing poetry,” he explained.
This she knew. “But you seem so much different from the other times.”
“That’s because I’m writing sad poetry.”
She looked at him. “Sad poetry?”
Her father sighed and opened the book again, staring at the words as if they played out a movie in front of his eyes. Later, she would find out that he had lost his job and had broken up with his lover. “Yes, sad poetry. Would you like to hear it?”
Alexia could hardly believe her ears. Her father never, ever, opened up his book of poems to her willingly, let alone offer to read them. Yes.
He grunted and a flipped a page.
For a long time happiness has evaded me,
the meaning of love a mystery
Alexia walked briskly through the corridors of the hospital, hardly daring to breathe. Every step she took felt like she were piercing her feet through needles and every tick of the clock felt like another countdown to death. She wasn’t sure of what happened and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She just knew that something very bad had happened and she felt like she was hanging on a balance and every little move she made could tip the scale. She walked past nurses and doctors like they were flashes in a big nightmare and she paused at the door of a ward. Her hand fumbled with the doorknob and she froze, unwilling to accept the possibility of reality that laid behind that door. Go in, she urged herself. You can’t run from reality forever.
Through seas of people and broken dreams,
There was someone who drew me in
Alexia did not register the action of pushing open the door but somehow, she was in the ward, and she was staring at Caden’s sleeping form. He’s just sleeping, she told herself. He’ll be alright. Sleeping is normal, scientifically proven to be a routine of life. He’ll wake up in no time. She dared not take a step closer. But why is everyone so sad?
But repelled me as well, from the moment I knew
That we were different, unmatchable, me and you
Through the corner of her eye, she saw Caden’s mother rise to walk towards her. The older lady threw her arms around Alexia in an embrace that served only to well up the grief she had been trying so hard to push down. She couldn’t even bring herself to ask if Caden would be alright.
You were all the things that I was not
But somehow, you made me myself I forgot
“It’s okay to cry, Alexia,” Mrs Gordon told her, mustering up a small, reassuring, though hardly, smile. Alexia wanted to tell her that she wanted to, except that it felt as though she had no tears left, despite not shedding a single drop. “Caden will be fine,” She continued, more for herself than for Alexia. “He will be fine.”
Gradually we started to form a bond
of weaves and heartstrings, mine red and yours blonde
The beeping of the heart monitor felt like the tick of a bomb. She dragged her feet to Caden’s bed and forced herself to register his motionless form. Two empty shells next to each other.
You showed me a side of me I had hated before,
So carefree, illogical, so shallow, so wrong
Alexia sank down into the chair next to Caden’s bed and she apprehensively took his hand in hers. “Hello,” she whispered, and tried to shake the thought that she was crazy for expecting a response out of her head. “I’ve come to visit you.” No reaction. “I hope you’re grateful, I could be doing much more productive things right now,” she gave a soft, half-hearted laugh at her own joke and waited for the witty comeback that usually followed. Nothing.
You twirled me into a fairytale that I,
In my wildest dreams never thought could comply
“Caden,” Mrs Gordon whispered to her son. “Alexia is here to greet you.” Alexia wondered why they bothered whispering. Were they afraid of disturbing someone? Might Caden wake up if they spoke too loudly? “You know,” Alexia mumbled. “It’s common courtesy to greet your guests.” She felt her grief and worry turn into anger. “Or are you that uncultured and ill-mannered that such an action evades your understanding?” She felt hot tears prickling at the edges of her eyes and she rapidly blinked them away. “Well, you stupid fool, wake up and greet me!”
And while holding us up on an emotional high,
I dared to look up at our string made of ice
Caden did not twitch and Alexia felt her anger drain away as quickly as it had built up. She just felt exhausted now, and she pined for the times when her biggest worry was a stupid love triangle. She wanted for nothing more than for Caden to wake up and shout ‘surprise! Fooled you!’ and she would slap him and they would both laugh at her naivety. She prodded his arm. “Wake up, Caden. You win, you’ve got me. Game over.” The winner did not ascend onstage to claim his prize.
And when the hot times came the ice melted away
And we fell back into an emotionless bay
Alexia felt a lump form in her throat and she furiously brushed the tears away from her eyes. “You asshole,” you seethed. “The games over! Why won’t you listen to the rules for once! This is why you were never valued over Chris in soccer! You don’t obey the rules! Time’s up, Caden! Wake up!”
And it happened so fast and so furiously so
that in all the anger and haste I forgot to know
The tears were coming on faster and slid down her face like an untamed army. Alexia wiped them away with more force than necessary and sucked in whatever feeling she had left. “Please,” she whispered.
If you loved me as much as I did for you
Because I couldn’t bear to leave the world that we had built for us two
“Please, wake up. I’m sorry, I am so, so sorry,” Alexia pleaded, the words so soft that she couldn’t even hear them herself. This was the point in books and movies where the fallen hero was supposed to wake up and jump into the arms of his beloved, but once again, Caden did not comply.
We barely got to share it before you walked out the door
And now my heart is an empty husk where love once reigned before
Suddenly, she felt the most wonderful twitch, the most fantastic flurry of activity. She heard cries of joy that she did not recall making, the doctors rushing in and the ray of hope that the sunlight in the room began to take the form of. She felt arms of joy wrap around her and as she rushed to the bed to see Caden open his eyes she felt herself able to breathe again.
And so now, my dear, I’m left with words unsaid
of how much I loved you, miss you and how I’m now dead
Trapped in a vacuum where time stood still, she floated once again his bedside, where tears of joy began to fall freely. This time, she did not stop them. “Where am I? What happened?” Caden mumbled groggily, and Alexia was glad for the doctors to provide the answers that she did not have. She hung back, gathering her feelings, her relief, her joy and disbelief and waited for them to clear a path so she could finally speak to Caden and this time, expect a reply.
So I guess, this is goodbye
And what I thought I knew of love has now evaporated and dried.
“Hey,” Alexia said again, as she sat down beside Caden. “I’m so sorry.”
He grinned at her and she felt her spirit soar. She was forgiven! “Don’t be. I am, though. I must have scared you pretty bad, huh?”
Alexia’s voice came out shaky and right then and there, she didn’t even care. “Yes, you did. I was beginning to think that I might have to say ‘I love you’ in order for you to wake up.”
Caden’s grin now ran far wider than the tube that served as the only reminder that he had been in the state that he was in a few moments ago, and Alexia couldn’t help the identical one that she gladly let split her face. “So you were planning to say that, huh?” he teased.
“Maybe,” she replied coyly.
“It only works in the fairytales if you mean it. Did you mean it?”
She took his hand in hers. “Maybe.”
“What about my kiss? No fairytale is complete without a kiss.”
“Don’t try your luck, Mr Gordon,” Alexia joked, but was more than willing to oblige.
“Come on, do you want to be forgiven or not?”
“Are you trying to blackmail me?” Alexia pretended to be incredulous, but before Caden could reply, she gently planted her lips on his. Two loved-filled shells, next to each other.
“Wow,” Caden said, when they finally broke apart. “Wow. What was that?”
“That,” Alexia replied, filled with a joy so foreign to her. “Was Alexia Lee finally meeting her match.”
Her father, done with the poem, closed the book and turned to her with heavy eyes. “That, my dear,” he said. “Is sad poetry.”
“That’s really nice, Dad, but there’s something you should change about it.”
“What?”
“You should remove the fullstop at the end.”